Remembering Our Veterans' Futures

Memorials and monuments are fine, but the best way to pay tribute to Canada's veterans is to make sure soldiers have the long-term support they deserve.

Compared to their counterparts in the U.S. and elsewhere, Canadian soldiers are a reserved, apolitical bunch. Talk to many of them, and you'll learn they aren't preoccupied with professions of patriotism routinely emanating from Parliament Hill. Ditto for what they think of most journalists covering the fray here in the safety of Canada. As such, they're not especially prone to fits of activism - which made this past weekend's veterans' protest all the more unusual.

As part of the federal government's budget-cutting measures, the Department of Veterans Affairs stands to cut between five and 10 per cent of its $3.5 billion budget. That's in addition to another $226 million that minister Steve Blaney says had been planned for sometime to coincide with veterans of Normandy, Hong Kong, and Korea dying in greater numbers as they get older.

That's a hard truth to dispute – old age is slowly achieving what enemy bullets couldn't. But that funding drop-off throws into question just what kind of support will be around for the more than 20,000 veterans of the Afghanistan War. A further few thousand soldiers will have gone to Kabul and back by 2014, when the Canadian Forces' training mission finally wraps up and brings to an end 13 years of involvement in a country most Canadians previously couldn't place on a map.

And it's the fate of those young men and women, most of whom are under the age of 40, that prompted protests in Halifax, Ottawa, Montreal, and anywhere sizable populations of veterans can be found. Aside from the budget cuts, the veterans decried the New Veterans Charter, the new payment system for disabled veterans rolled out in 2006 that dropped the practice of monthly payments in favour of a one-time lump sum, the largest of which can be $285,000. Over 60 years, that's not a whole lot of dough, especially if a vet's ability to work is hampered by post-traumatic stress disorder or a missing limb. Granted, if they're unable to work altogether, then veterans can apply for more long-term benefits. But even then, one analysis shows they're still getting less throughout their lifetimes compared to the previous system.

Two thousand Canadian soldiers have come home from Afghanistan with injuries. Another 158 came home in caskets. While the Canadian Forces says rates of PTSD are somewhere between three and six per cent among returning soldiers, the U.S. military puts their own number between five and 20 per cent. Other estimates have put it as high as 60 per cent. That's certainly on the higher end of the scale, but as in all matters of war, you plan for the worst possible outcomes and hope for the best. Even if 5,000 Afghan vets are suffering from severe cases of PTSD, how can we be assured they'll be taken care of when the department that supports them stands to face substantial cuts at the hands of Tony Clement?

Those veterans' benefits won't be touched, Blaney assures us, saying that money will be found in the elimination of the ever elusive "red tape". (As an aside, it's worth noting that any time a politician says exorbitant savings can be found in cutting red tape, they're almost guaranteed to be proven wrong. Exhibit A: Rob Ford.) So far, though, the government has routinely underestimated just how much will be needed to look after Afghan and Bosnia vets. Treasury Board estimates from this year show that Veterans Affairs will have dispensed seven per cent more in disability payments – that's $163 million – than it had anticipated in its budget. In addition, the department is trimming 500 jobs over the next five years. Veterans' cash benefits might be safe, but one has to wonder just how much support programs will suffer if there are fewer staff around to run them.

It's tough to square the needs of veterans who have given everything short of their lives with the government's mandate to cut five per cent of the department's budget. Which is why Stephen Harper's Conservatives should avoid cuts at Veterans Affairs, unless it's to top it up. Other countries – notably the U.S., which has suffered far more casualties, proportionally, than Canada over the past decade, but also Australia and the U.K. – have spared their veterans' departments the cleaver while going through similar such reductions. Here in Canada, the government is forking over untold billions to purchase F-35 stealth fighters, yet demands those who have sacrificed the most to dig a little deeper. These, apparently, are the priorities of a government that routinely badgers the opposition for not "supporting the troops." This Remembrance Day, instead of promises to roll out heavier punishments to people convicted of defacing war memorials or to erect more monuments, Stephen Harper can show the ultimate sign of respect to the men and women who have fought in our country's name by ensuring that their future battles at home will never be fought alone.